Chapter : 537

Without another word, her face a mask of furious, impotent frustration, she turned and swept from the room. She left her father to his maps, to his wars, to his cold, hard calculus of power. And she went to find her sister, to offer what little comfort she could, a prisoner in her own home, bound by the invisible, unbreakable chains of tradition and a widow’s curse. The Siddik family, in the face of a crisis, had chosen not to show support, but to retreat into the cold, safe, and silent, fortress of their own pragmatism.

—

The royal guest suite, with its suffocating silence and its ghosts of unresolved tension, was a prison. Lloyd fled from it as soon as the sun was fully risen, needing to escape the memory of his own weakness, of Faria’s unexpected kindness, of the entire, messy, and deeply complicated tapestry of human emotion he was so ill-equipped to handle. He needed a different kind of solitude. Not the lonely, watchful quiet of the palace, but the clean, absolute, and wonderfully productive solitude of creation. He needed the Farm.

He made his excuses, a brief, formal note to his royal handlers stating that he would be engaged in ‘private, intensive cultivation and study’ for the remainder of the day and was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. It was a plausible, if vague, explanation for a powerful young nobleman, and one that would grant him the uninterrupted time he so desperately craved.

He found a secluded alcove in the vast palace library, a place smelling of ancient, forgotten knowledge, and with a final, steadying breath, he closed his eyes and stepped through the shimmering, translucent gate.

The transition was instantaneous, the jarring, wrenching feeling of dimensional travel now a familiar, almost comforting, sensation. The world of Riverio, with its complex politics and its even more complex women, dissolved, replaced by the serene, stark, and beautifully simple reality of his private world.

He stood on the vibrant, impossibly green grass, the perpetual, cloudless blue sky of the Slime Plains stretching out before him. The quiet, gentle gurgle of the newly respawned slime population was a welcome, familiar sound. The dark, menacing line of the Shadowfen Forest on the horizon was not a threat, but a promise of future challenges, of future harvests. The simple, elegant stone house, his sanctuary, stood waiting, a beacon of peace and absolute security.

He let out a long, slow breath, feeling the immense, crushing weight of his public life, of his multiple, conflicting personas, simply… fall away. Here, he was not Lord Ferrum, the awkward heir. He was not Professor Ferrum, the enigmatic teacher. He was not the White Mask, the grim avenger. He was not even KM Evan, the man haunted by a lifetime of memories. Here, in this place that was an extension of his own soul, he was just… himself. A creator. A warrior. A man with a mission.

He walked past the teeming slime fields, their jiggly, bouncing forms no longer a source of tedious frustration, but a quiet, reassuring symbol of his future, passive income. He walked past the dark edge of the goblin forest, his mind already calculating the most efficient way to clear out the remaining nests and confront the chieftain. He walked to the door of his small, stone house, and stepped inside.

The silence within was absolute, a profound, perfect peace. This was his true study. His true war room. A place where he could think, plan, and, most importantly, act, without fear of interruption, of observation, of judgment.

The time had come. The decision, which had been simmering at the back of his mind since the System 2.0 update had first presented him with the impossible, tantalizing reward, was now a firm, unshakeable resolve. He had endured the chaotic installation. He had survived the terrifying eruption of his own power. He had discovered the game-changing secret of the Farm’s time dilation. He had been given a glimpse of a new, more powerful future with the Debt Protocol and the tripled conversion rate.

But the gift… the true, astonishing, and still-unclaimed prize of the update… it waited for him. A shimmering, holographic gift box icon, tucked away in the corner of his mental inventory, a sleeping titan of immense, world-altering potential. A free, summonable, Transcendent-level spirit.

Chapter : 538

His heart began to pound, a slow, heavy, and deeply, profoundly, excited rhythm. The anticipation, which he had so ruthlessly suppressed in the real world due to Rosa’s inconvenient, sleeping presence, was now a thrumming, electric energy in his veins. Here, in the absolute privacy of his own dimension, there were no witnesses. There was no one to shock, no one to alert. He could unleash the storm. He could finally, finally, open his gift.

He sat cross-legged on the cool, smooth stone floor in the center of the room. He closed his eyes, sinking deep into the familiar, star-dusted interface of the System. He navigated to his inventory, his will a sharp, focused point of light. And there it was. The icon. A simple, beautiful, golden gift box, tied with a ribbon of starlight, pulsing with a gentle, latent power that was almost overwhelming even in its dormant state.

He took a deep, centering breath, stilling the frantic, almost childish, excitement that threatened to overwhelm his composure. This was a momentous occasion, a turning point in his new life, perhaps the most significant one yet. The acquisition of a second Transcended spirit would not just change his own power level; it would change the very calculus of power in the world he inhabited. It would elevate him from a rising star to a true, undeniable, celestial body.

He focused his will, his entire being, on the single, simple, and impossibly, wonderfully, potent command.

“Open.”

The command was a quiet whisper in his mind, but it was a whisper that shook the very foundations of his private world. The holographic gift box did not just open. It detonated. Not with a sound, not with a flash of light, but with a silent, concussive wave of pure, informational energy that flooded his consciousness. A torrent of data, of potential, of a thousand different possibilities, washed over him.

And then, the System interface appeared, no longer a simple menu, but a vast, complex, and beautiful, interactive tapestry.

[Spirit Grant: Transcendent-Level Acquisition Protocol Initiated.]

[User Lloyd Ferrum, your acceptance of the System 2.0 update has unlocked this one-time foundational asset grant. You are now authorized to design and manifest one (1) new, primary spirit partner at the Transcend stage.]

[First Step: Affinity Selection.]

[A Transcended spirit’s power is defined by its core elemental affinity. This choice is permanent and will define the nature of all its future abilities. Please select the primary elemental affinity for your new spirit.]

A new screen bloomed before him, a wheel of pure, vibrant, elemental energy. He saw the swirling, earthy brown of the Earth affinity. The deep, flowing blue of Water. The sharp, clear, almost invisible, shimmer of Wind. The crackling, brilliant azure of Lightning, an affinity he already commanded through Fang Fairy.

But his gaze was drawn, with an irresistible, almost primal, pull, to a single, vibrant, and terrifyingly, beautifully, destructive section of the wheel.

It was a churning, roaring vortex of pure, incandescent energy, the color of a dying sun and the heart of a volcano. It was a maelstrom of furious reds, of brilliant oranges, of deep, almost black, crimsons. It was an element of pure, unadulterated, and absolute, annihilation.

Fire.

The elemental wheel spun before his mind’s eye, a kaleidoscope of cosmic potential. Earth, for unshakeable defense. Water, for fluid control and healing. Wind, for speed and untouchable grace. Lightning, a power he already knew, a storm he already commanded. Each one was a path, a philosophy, a universe of tactical possibilities. A logical choice might have been to select a complementary element—Earth to shore up his defenses, or Water for recovery and support. The strategist in him weighed the options with cold, clinical precision.

But this was not a decision to be made by the strategist. Not entirely. This was a decision of the soul. Of the gut. Of the man who had been KM Evan, a creator of weapons, a wielder of overwhelming force, a man who understood, on a deep, primal level, the beautiful, terrible, and absolute, purity of fire.

He thought of the raw, destructive power of Redborn, Ken Park’s magnificent ox spirit. He thought of the controlled, contained inferno of his own Ferrum fire, a power of heat and shaping. But he wanted more. He wanted not just the heat of the forge, but the unmaking fire of a star. He wanted an inferno. An apocalypse, bound to his will.